Electric fence issue

[Bandit]

I hope I have this in the right section.

We were fixing a section of fence and I had touched a part that shouldn't have been charged and one of the metal poles and got a low shock through it. Not full force (which is usually huge because we have a 10 mile charger on a 1 mile fence) but still a noticable one. On our fence we have 2 strands. The top one is white electric rope without the charge, its just there for visibility purposes. The 2nd one is just plain wire that is charged.

Well for some reason our top rope that should have had NO charge had a light one when we tested after I got shocked. On our tester the electic wire has all 6 bars lit up brightly, but the rope had the 2 bottom ones lit up dully, but there should have been none.

Spent all afternoon to see if there was anything at all conducting electricity through the other wire. We even unconnected some sections to isolate where the charge was coming from and all section we tried still had a charge. Which would indicate multiple places that a charge is crossing over, right? But anything direct would have produced a bigger charge on that rope.

It was absolutely baffling as everything looked fine. There are NO weeds. The insulators are all in good condition and both strands are held 2 inches off the metal T-poles and about 1 inch off of the wood poles. Neither stand is trouching wood, wire or each other.

We finally gave up. I'm starting to think that the lower wire had some type of electric field it was giving off since we have such a powerful charger now and the rope was picking it up. Still its strange but its not the first time I picked up a small shock in rope that should have had none.

[Slim Pikkens]

Count your blessings. There's nothing worse than trying to figure out why you can't get a decent charge in any strand. If you use metal posts and the strands are too close together that can be the problem. I'd leave it the way it is and just warn people that both strands are live.

[Joker]

LOL very true it is harder to find out why there is a charge in a cold wire than to find out why there is no charge ( broken fence weeds ect. ) But much nicer to at least have "hot wires" I'd keep it that way .

[DanielleS]

I agree...although when my lines that aren't supposed to be charged have a charge it means that the one that is supposed to be hot is not as hot as it should be

[Faceman]

Did you test your ground rod? If there is anything coming through that you have a short somewhere that is being picked up by the rope through the posts - just a matter of figuring out where the short is. If there is nothing coming through the ground rod, I don't have a clue...

[Orchid]

Stray voltage is the bane of many a farmer...and it can be really, really hard to figure out where it is coming from sometimes. An electrician could be helpful in this case.

[Diamond_Y]

Stray voltage does not necessarily even come from your fence charger. When we had our dairy, our barn was built fairly close to high power transmission lines. We had problems with stray voltage shocking our cows while they were being milked. Finally, a good electrician was able to figure out the problem and fix it with additional grounding. But it took months to figure out just what the problem really was.

[Orchid]

Diamond Y is right. My husband is an electrician (among other things) and he has hunted down his fair share of stray voltage - sometimes it comes from old wiring that no one even knows is there.

[OSUJillyBean]

My ex was working out at the power plant one day and they went to an area where apparently a lot of "charge" was in the air (don't ask me - I fail at electricity). He held up a long fluorescent light, completely unattached to anything, and it lit up! He has pictures of this phenomenon.

Crazy stuff, that electricity.